COMPANY FOCUS: UKO PLC
the merchant doesn’t lose out on what is a lucrative part of the market,” he says. He adds that, for the one-man builder, the benefits are immediate. “He’s up at seven in the morning, on site all day, bricklaying or plumbing or whatever he’s doing. He hasn’t got time to spend three hours in a merchant, instead he needs to get home in the evening and then deal with his paperwork.” That paperwork often includes preparing a windows schedule, a task that can now be completed far more efficiently. “Instead of drawing that up and then spending hours at the merchant, he can just do it online there and then,” Glover says. “If you understand your sizes and a few basic options, you can process that as a quote.”
Once submitted, the system feeds directly into the merchant’s workflow. “It comes in as a new lead. Someone with expertise can quickly check it, make sure everything’s correct, and then it’s literally click, send quote. It’s that simple.”
The platform also enables collaboration between homeowner, builder and merchant, reducing the back-and-forth that often leads to confusion. “The end user can configure
what they want, click send, and everyone in the chain knows what’s happened. The builder understands the requirement, knows the cost, and can go back to the customer with confidence. It removes uncertainty and cuts out opportunities for mistakes.” Reducing errors is central to the proposition, Glover says. “The more times the same information is input into a system, the more chance there is for mistakes. Something might get entered as 890mm instead of 980mm. It doesn’t matter whose error it is, suddenly you have extra cost and delay. That’s one reason why merchants have avoided this sector.”
However, he believes that, with those risks largely eliminated, merchants can finally engage more confidently with fenestration sales. “What stops someone working on the trade counter from asking, ‘where are you getting your windows from, can we help?’ It’s usually fear of it going wrong.” Price, he adds, is rarely the real barrier. “That’s never what limits a sale, which has to
July 2026
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
always be about the right price for the product you’re buying. We’re not cheap, we’re not expensive, we’re just right for the quality that we produce. We’re confident in what we do because making windows and doors is what we’re very good at, and we’ve been doing it for years.”
Ultimately, the Quad offer is as much about enabling sales as it is about simplifying processes, Glover says. “Once you understand sales, you can see where people aren’t buying and why. If you can remove those barriers, you make it much easier for customers to buy, and buy from merchants. That’s what this is all about.” BMJ
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